


parallel posited

by laceratedLynx



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternative Perspective, Animal Death, Canon Compliant, Gen, Murder, Not Really Character Death, POV Third Person Limited, Scene Rewrite, Schrödinger’s Cat Taken Far Too Seriously, Time Loop On A Technicality, Time Shenanigans, Time Travel, hey remember how beetlewhisker dies and comes back to life?, most of this terrible dialogue is taken directly from the book, no?, rewrite of that one scene in the last hope, well ive got an explanation anyway., wondering how one fic can have both of those tags? so am i!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 18:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18530551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laceratedLynx/pseuds/laceratedLynx
Summary: Beetlewhisker is dead, and then he isn’t. There are a variety of powers at play here.—Or, alternatively, the concept of Schrödinger’s cat is taken far too literally, and Beetlewhisker suffers for it.





	parallel posited

**Author's Note:**

> i somehow didnt make that schrödinger’s cat joke when i originally posted this and that makes me so fucking sad.

    “Victory over what?” The silver-and-white she-cat -  _Ivypool_ , Beetlewhisker knew - mewed, her voice clipped. 

     “Our enemies,”  The giant brown tom growled, his voice echoing through the clearing. Brokenstar surveyed the clearing, his orange gaze cutting through the trainees’ practiced bravado like dog teeth through cat flesh, his leering stare seemingly pointing out every insecurity.  There was a quality to it that gave Beetlewhisker chills - of which he would never tell the scarred tomcat.

   “Our courage will be tested but we will be ready.” He hissed, his breath foul and smelling of crowfood even from a foxlength away. Beetlewhisker started at this, digging his claws further into the suffocating muck beneath him. He trained here to make himself stronger, to increase his skills, to protect his clanmates! What enemies?

Between the uneasiness in his belly and the sick feeling through him, he had an idea of what he was about to be told.

“Enemies?” Beetlewhisker stretched his muzzle forward, curious despite the repressed dread. _It’s irrational_ , he told himself. _They wouldn’t do that- I know them_. “What enemies?”

Mapleshade twisted her head toward him, the tortoiseshell queen’s face contorted into something that looked to be an echo of amusement. She blinked at him dubiously. “Don’t you know yet?” She rasped, her voice carrying the strange unnerving quality of all the cats who spent their time in The Place of No Stars. She flicked her tail dismissively.

“Have your clanmates never doubted you even though you were right? Has Mistystar never acted like a mouse-heart, siding with weaker cats while punishing the strong? Have your clan mates never treated you like a kit when you are more skillful and dangerous than they could even imagine? I don’t know how you can bear returning every sunrise to feed and protect such feeble creatures!”

Beetlewhisker bristled, the fur on his spine standing up and spiking into clumps of nervousness and rage. “My clanmates are not feeble or mouse-brained! Mistystar is noble. If she sides with the weak, it’s because the weak need our protection!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Tigerstar’s sun-colored eyes flashed dangerously. The huge tabby tom’s claws flexed, scoring scratch marks into the dirt. Beetlewhisker couldn’t help but unsheathe his claws, suddenly apprehensive. “The weak should be left to be for themselves.” The enormous tom rumbled, drawing a tongue over his fangs.

Beetlewhisker only barely blinked back his shock. “But that’s the opposite of everything the warrior code teaches us!” Brokenstar lowered his head and spoke- much quieter than before, but he felt an undercurrent of rage beneath the whispered purr.

”The warrior code teaches you how to be weak.” His orange eyes glittered dangerously in the shadowed woods. Beetlewhisker took a step back, his paws only pressing deeper into the sludge of the forest floor.

“It teaches us to be strong!” Beetlewhisker snapped, curling his muzzle. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but you’ll never make me despise the warrior code, or my Clan!” He stepped forward towards the grizzled brown tabby, rage visible in ever hair on his muzzle. “My Clan thinks it’s being targeted by rogues because of you. They’re frightened by our nighttime visits to their territory. I don’t want to be part of that.”

Beetlewhisker’s voice softened. “I appreciate all you’ve taught me, I really do. You’ve made me a stronger warrior than I could have ever dreamed of being, but I can’t stay here. I must leave and protect my Clan. I won’t be coming here again.” He finished, letting out a breath before turning and padding away, shouldering past Hawkfrost and Applefur.

He heard a low hiss from behind him. He turned to see Brokenstar, ears flattened and claws unsheathed, looking more dangerous than he’d ever seen him. His very image seemed to flicker- his clear orange eyes marred by one long slash across his wide muzzle, dripping crimson- before flashing back to normal so fast he couldn’t be sure anything had changed at all.

”No cat leaves the Dark Forest unless I say so. Your loyalty is to us now.” Beetlewhisker paused, glancing over his shoulder.

“My loyalty is to RiverClan, just as it has always been. You promised me that coming here would make me stronger for my Clanmates. It has, and I’m grateful, but you must have known that I’d leave eventually.”

Brokenstar’s eyes glinted menacingly, and a twisted sneer spread over his muzzle. “You really are dumb, aren’t you?”

Beetlewhisker lashed his tail, trying desperately to appear threatening, but compared to the gargantuan tabby before him, he was nothing more than an errant kit- and they both knew it. “Not as dumb as you hoped!” He growled, trying to muster all the bravery in his heart, but it seemed to have left him the moment he needed it most. “I’m going, and you can’t stop me.”

In a flash, Brokenstar shot from the circle of Dark Forest cats and blocked his path.

Applefur’s tail trembled. “Don’t go, Beetlewhisker. You’ve got friends here.” Her mew strained, the ingrained cheerfulness paling next to the fear in her eyes.

”Thanks, Applefur.” He nodded to the ShadowClan cat. “But I have to go. This is the right time for me to leave.” He purred, trying to sound reassuring.

”Really?” Brokenstar’s growl sharpened into a screech as he reared up on his hind legs. His shadow, already immense, now stretched across the clearing, blotting out the already dim light that trickled down from the starless sky. He dove for Beetlewhisker, his claws outstretched and fangs bared. He didn’t resemble a cat or any animal of the sort- he appeared a monstrous apparition of shadows and claws, coming for Beetlewhisker like all his nightmares rolled into one beast.

 His eyes widened in horror, putting up his paws to fend off the vicious tomcat, but Brokenstar knocked him off his feet with a fierce swipe. He staggered to his paws, blood streaming from his nose.

“Starclan help me!”

"You think StarClan listens to what happens here?” Brokenstar hissed, his face lit up in a brutal grin. Beetlewhisker could only watch as the grotesque black tabby clamped his jaws around his neck as if he were nothing more than prey to be tossed aside. His eyes glittered like pinpoints of flame, and Brokenstar lifted his head, twisting his neck around with a sickening crack.

He heard nothing after that, and felt nothing, his vision shadowed. Everything twisted over and over before him until he felt like throwing up whatever was left inside him- if there was anything to start with. It took him an unknowable amount of time to understand that there wasn’t anything under his paws anymore, the world gone cold.

 

 

——

 

 

Beetlewhisker sees stars. He doesn’t think he’s ready to become one, yet, though. The sky above him sparks, the stars calling to him. He doesn’t understand. How did he get here? Where is he?

 

He rears up on his hind legs, reaching up towards the glittering pinpricks of light above him, which seem to emanate warmth.He can hear them murmuring, whispering about him. To him. For him.

 

The world bends around him, the sky curved like a cat’s tail, protecting him from the expanse of emptiness below him. The world gets brighter, and he glances up to see the moon right above him, full and round and closer than he’s ever seen it. He reaches up again, pawing at the celestial ceiling above him. A moment after this, he feels a shock spreading through the air and the ground, despite standing on nothing at all.

 

The sky shatters, cracking into infinitesimal pieces of rainbow glitterings. He meows in concern before he begins to plummet, the feeling of rejection the only one he is consciously aware of.

 

The world tumbles around him, sights and sounds and smells he couldn’t begin to process even if he wasn’t falling towards nothing and everything all at once fly and curl around him. He smashes to the ground, a resounding ring of pain jolting through his spine as he finds himself back in the place where stars refuse to shine.

 

The trees around him look sickly and dead, and pale fungi cast hollow rays of late to illuminate the dead grass and skeletal trees. The mud under his paws squelches, already stuck between his paw pads. He yowls in alarm, eyes widening. He can’t be here! They just-

 

Beetlewhisker pales. Staring at his paws, as if suprised he can’t see through them.

 

He’s dead, after all.

 

He won’t let himself stay here. He knows why he can’t stay in StarClan- but he won’t, he can’t let himself stay here.

 

He hears the trees whisper around him, shadows flitting around his vision, wanting to see him but not wanting to be seen. Their aura is cold, unlike the comforting warmth of the stars. _I’m long gone from those, though_ , he supposes.

 

He feels another rip through the ground below him, and the muddy floor, the dead trees, and the ghostly fungi are all swept away into the void as Beetlewhisker tumbles into the nothingness below him. He screams but the vacuum around him won’t tolerate sound, and that too is swept away into the abyss that has never seen light or kindness.

 

After what could be either a second or a century passes, he feels cold stone under his paws, and his green eyes detect a faint white glow from somewhere ahead. Or maybe behind? He blindly races towards whatever or wherever it is, all rational thought having abandoned him long ago.

 

He is facing a precipice, upon which a single creature is sat, its silhouette visible in the pale light before being lit by the sky itself opening up around him.

 

Squinting through the blinding light, he narrows his eyes to see a scrawny, bald tom stretched out along the edge, laid out like lazing about on cliff edges is an everyday occurrence for him. His blind blue eyes stare down, and looking into them, Beetlewhisker doesn’t think it’s a cat, truly. The tom yawns, making his long pale teeth incredibly visible.

 

”And where do you want to go, Beetlewhisker?” The tom mews - a cracked, broken sound. He talks like he knows him. Maybe he does.

 

Beetlewhisker doesn’t understand. He can’t.

 

”Back. I want to go home.” He doesn’t want to go to the Dark Forest or Starclan, if that was even in the realm of possibility, he just wants to go back and see his clanmates again.

 

The tom stares at him, white eyes seeing nothing.

 

He idly flicks a furless tail, and there’s a sound like a tearing, a cut through fur and flesh and bone larger than anything can fix and a freezing feeling down to his core, and he’s sent spiraling back and back and back to when he thought he understood things.

 

 

——

 

 

”No cat leaves the Dark Forest unless I say so. Your loyalty is to us now.” Brokenstar hissed, a nonexistent wound dripping crimson onto the too-real forest floor.

Beetlewhisker jolted, struck by a sickening feeling that he’d seen this before and he’d see this again if he wasn’t careful, based on nothing but no less strong for it. He glanced over his shoulder, then back to the huge brown tom. “You’re right, Brokenstar. I ... I don’t know what got into me. You’re right.” Brokenstar took a satisfied step back, something like approval showing on his face.

Beetlewhisker felt (feels) cold.

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally posted in like.... october of last year i think. i deleted it when i deleted my original terrible account. i re-edited it though. fixed some of the more egregious tense issues. or so i think.  
> i realized partway through editing this that i wrote “sky shatters” and. haha. shattered sky. nice. idk what crack me from half a year ago was on but i doubt that was intentional.  
> is this way too weird for warrior cat fanfiction. yes. however, the erins forgot he died and brought him back, so i am justified.  
> happy 4/20. in my defense it was the nineteenth when i started editing this. i am so fucking sick right now. “i dont get sick, usually” i typed earlier this week, oblivious to the havoc that god would wreak upon me for having so much hubris.  
> this isn’t like. the greatest thing ever published. the prose could use some work. however. this is warrior cat fanfiction.


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